The prehistoric sequence in the New World shares many essential developmental features with the Old World and provides a test for generalizations about cultural development based upon Old World materials. In the New World there is evidence for an early horizon of primitive food collectors, followed by an increasing specialization of food collecting based primarily upon differences in localized resources. These specialized collectors were followed by a tradition of food production independent of the Old World.

With food production came gradual increases in centres of population; villages were succeeded by towns and finally by centres of urban civilizations, which at the time of European contact were comparable to the ancient civilizations of the Middle East.

The absence of a suitable fossil record and of cultural remains from Early and Middle Pleistocene deposits in the New World have led prehistorians to look to the Old World as the ultimate source of the diverse populations of American Indians found in the Western Hemisphere by the early European explorers. Present knowledge of Pleistocene glaciations and of accompanying alterations in sea level indicates that the most probable route of entry for man from the Old World was via a land bridge between Alaska and Siberia, crossing what is now the Bering Strait. It appears that a dry-land crossing of this area was possible during periods of continental glaciation, until about 10,000 years ago. The subsequent flooding of this region has hidden whatever traces these early migrants may have left of their arrival on the threshold of the American continents, and it is necessary to look to the interior of North America for evidence of their presence. Although these early horizons of American prehistory are little known, a few sites in central Mexico have cultural remains or other possible evidences of man in a context suggesting occupation as early as 20,000 years ago. At no site in this early context are there any types of implements distinctive enough to be recognized in a context of crudely chipped stone tools from later horizons.

Early cultures

The earliest well-defined cultures in the New World have been placed by radiocarbon dating at about 9000 to 10,000 BC. At this period, two distinct traditions in North America are known: the Paleo-Indian big-game hunters of the Great Plains and eastern North America, and the Desert-culture peoples of the western basin–range region.

Paleo-Indian tradition

The oldest remains of the Paleo-Indian tradition are found on sites where large Pleistocene mammals were killed and butchered. The most distinctive artifact type of this horizon is the Clovis Fluted projectile point, a lanceolate point of chipped stone that has had one or more longitudinal flakes struck from the base of each flat face. These points are accompanied by side scrapers and, in one instance, by long cylindrical shafts of ivory. They are most frequently associated with mammoth, although associations with extinct species of bison, horse, and camel have also been reported.

A second Paleo-Indian horizon, which seems in part to be contemporary with the Clovis material and partially to postdate it, is the Folsom phase of the central high plains. It is characterized by lanceolate points of more careful manufacture (including broader fluted surfaces) than Clovis, associated with the remains of extinct Bison antiquus. The Lindenmeier site, a Folsom campsite in northeastern Colorado, has yielded a wide variety of end and side scrapers, gravers, and miscellaneous bone artifacts. Clovis sites have been dated at about 9000 BC by radiocarbon, and Folsom sites at about 500 to 1,000 years later. Fluted points similar to western Clovis specimens have been found over most of the eastern United States south of the limits of the last major glacial advance. A single series of radiocarbon dates from the Debert site in Nova Scotia places the age of points of similar type at about 8500 to 9000 BC in that area. The distribution of this artifact type with respect to glacial events, however, suggests an appearance as early as 11,000 BC and a terminal date about 3,000 years later. In the east, several specialized varieties of fluted points may replace Clovis-type points toward the end of the Paleo-Indian occupation. While there is no instance of the discovery of eastern fluted points in association with an extinct fauna, the similarity of the accompanying assemblages of scrapers and gravers to those of the western industries suggests a similar carnivorous economic orientation in the east. Outside of the United States, fluted points have been reported at scattered sites from Alaska to Ecuador, but no certain temporal context has been established for any of these finds, and faunal associations are not clear.

Another variety of Paleo-Indian culture, which appears to be contemporary with the Clovis and Folsom phases, is characterized in its early horizons by rather crudely flaked lanceolate points that have been found associated with the bones of mammoth at two sites near Ixtapan in the Valley of Mexico and between the Clovis and Folsom horizons in a gravel pit near Portales, New Mexico. Similar points in circumstances suggesting comparable age have been found at San Jon, New Mexico, and Lime Creek, Nebraska. It appears that by about 7000 BC the fluted-point industries were replaced by a succession of lanceolate-point-using phases, which continued the Paleo-Indian hunting tradition, concentrating primarily on large, now-extinct species of bison until the onset of the Altithermal dry period about 5000 BC. The eastern limit of these cultures is in the vicinity of the western Great Lakes, while the most intensive occupation was on the western plains.

Desert tradition

The Desert-culture tradition, an adaptation of food-collecting peoples to the impoverished habitats of the basin–range area of western North America, seems to have been established by about 9000 BC. The most extensive knowledge of this way of life comes from cave or rock-shelter sites, such as Danger Cave in western Utah, in which the desiccated remains of vegetal and animal materials have been discovered along with stone tools. The Desert peoples made intensive use of virtually all aspects of their habitat, specializing in the use of vegetable fibres for a wide variety of implements, including twine, nets, baskets, sandals, and snares. Projectile points appear to have been mostly leaf- or lozenge-shaped or lanceolate in earlier phases, with a greater use of notching for hafting in later phases. An essential feature of Desert assemblages is the milling stone, for use in grinding wild seeds. In earlier sites this is likely to be a small, thin, portable slab of stone used with a small pebble handstone, while later in the sequence, large, basin-shaped milling stones are more characteristic. Large choppers and scrapers are common in Desert sites and appear to have been used for the processing of plant materials.

Rise of agriculture

Although the southern limits of the Desert culture are not yet clearly defined, it is known that it extended into Mexico, where, in the state of Tamaulipas, Desert materials have been found associated with the earliest known cultivated plants in the New World. Here, in the Infernillo phase, it appears that native American squash, peppers, and perhaps beans were being cultivated as early as 6500 BC. At this time, domesticates formed only a small portion of the total diet, the bulk of which was derived from wild animals and, to a lesser extent, wild plants. At about 2500 BC a primitive variety of corn (maize) first appeared in the Tamaulipas area in the La Perra phase. It appears, however, that corn was first domesticated elsewhere, possibly in the Puebla area of south central Mexico, where a date of 3600 BC is reported from materials associated with early corn in a cave near the town of Tehuacán. Even in the La Perra phase, cultivated species formed only a small part of the total diet, the majority of foodstuffs being wild plants. It appears that the development of efficient techniques of production of the three major New World domesticates—corn, beans, and squash—was necessary before real sedentary village and town life was possible in most of nuclear America. This level of efficiency seems to have been reached between 2000 and 1500 BC in Mesoamerica and Peru. Thus, there is evidence in the New World for plant domestication comparable in age to that of the Old World, but for many years this was unattended by the development of village life that closely followed domestication there.

Other developments

While the earliest cultivation was under way in Middle America, other areas of the New World also show evidence of interesting developments. At the site of Palli Aike, on the Strait of Magellan, the earliest cultural horizon has yielded a radiocarbon date of about 8000 BC, indicating that man reached the southern extremity of the New World well before 10,000 years ago. In the Northern Hemisphere, food-collecting cultures were well adapted to several specialized ways of life by about 4000 BC.

Archaic tradition

In the eastern United States, two basic traditions utilizing the woodland areas appear to have grown from an earlier culture that was present in that area by 6000 or 7000 BC. This early Archaic tradition is best known from the Modoc Rock Shelter in southern Illinois and from Graham Cave in Missouri and Russel Cave in Alabama. It differs from preceding Paleo-Indian horizons in its orientation toward a broad range of resources, including plant foods, as evidenced by the frequent use of milling stones. While some projectile points from these sites suggest Paleo-Indian varieties, the majority are stemmed or notched and differ in flaking technique from contemporary western Paleo-Indian specimens. By 2500 BC the Archaic cultures of eastern North America had separated into several distinct phases. There appears to have been a major division between peoples adapted to a riverine environment in the south and those adapted to the lacustrine resources of the north. Both depended, to a large extent, on the forest resources bordering these aquatic habitats. The Middle Atlantic coastal area appears to have supported another type of Archaic culture, and the boreal forests of the north yet another. In areas without concentrations of particularly favourable resources, a generalized Archaic culture similar to the earlier pattern seems to have persisted. Most Archaic cultures are characterized by a rather extensive use of ground-stone implements, both woodworking tools and other categories, such as bowls, knives, net sinkers, and elaborate weights for spear throwers. Projectile points vary widely but are usually rather large and crude and are stemmed or broadly notched for hafting. Perhaps the most interesting of the late Archaic manifestations is the Old Copper culture of the northern Great Lakes area. Here, exposures of native copper were quarried and cold-hammered into implements, such as projectile points, knives, awls, and axes; and highly valued copper from this region was traded over much of eastern North America.

Western North America

In western North America, similar developments were under way during this same period. It appears that the more arid regions of the basin–range country were largely depopulated during the Altithermal dry period (from about 5600 to 2500 BC) and that in surrounding regions diversification and specialization took place. In the drainages of the major rivers of the northwest, such as the Columbia and the Fraser, the annual abundance of salmon was the basis of a cultural adjustment as early as 7000 BC. Implements of this horizon are similar to those found earlier in the Desert culture, with projectile points, the most diagnostic artifact types, tending to be long and leaf-shaped or slightly stemmed and with a few notched forms also present. Following the Altithermal drought, a broad horizon characterized by the use of indented-based points with serrate-edged blades (generally termed “Pinto-like,” after the type locality in the Pinto Basin of California) is found over much of the southern portion of western North America. In at least one of the phases representing this horizon, the Chiricahua of southern Arizona and New Mexico, it appears that primitive corn cultivation was practiced. The site of Bat Cave in western New Mexico has produced specimens of a type of primitive corn that is also known from the Flacco phase in Tamaulipas at 2000 BC but that is here in association with a Chiricahua assemblage from which materials have been dated at about 1000 BC.

South and Middle America

By 2500 BC, techniques of cultivation had also reached the northern coast of Peru, where, at such sites as Huaca Prieta at the mouth of the Chicama Valley, there was a mixed dependence upon marine foods such as sea urchins, mollusks, and fish; upon wild plants, mostly tubers and roots; and upon cultivated plants, including beans, peppers, and a different genus of squash than that cultivated in the early horizons in Tamaulipas. Gourds and cotton were also grown, the gourds for use as containers and net floats, the cotton for twined fabric and cordage. The use of stone at Huaca Prieta is interesting in its simplicity. Crude flakes and shattered pebbles compose the entire chipped-stone industry, while pecked and ground-stone artifacts are chiefly perforated net sinkers. In the upper levels of the site are architectural remains consisting of one- or two-room, small cobble-walled subterranean houses. The absence of ceramics at the Huaca Prieta site poses a number of interesting problems. From the Valdivia site in Ecuador, several hundred miles to the north, radiocarbon samples indicate that ceramics may have been present there as early as 2500 BC, and another date from Panama indicates that the ceramics of the Monagrillo phase were manufactured by about 2000 BC. Present knowledge of the northern coast of Peru does not reveal ceramics before about 1200 BC, indicating an isolation of this area from cultural developments to the north. With ceramics, corn and other indications of Middle-American influence appear in Peru.

Village farming and towns

The appearance of village farming in the upper levels at Huaca Prieta and in the immediately succeeding Guañape phase in surrounding areas is roughly contemporaneous with the first appearance of this way of life in the Valley of Mexico at such sites as Zacatenco and El Arbolillo. Here a relatively sophisticated ceramic tradition (clearly derived from elsewhere) appears in the earliest levels. While evidence for architecture is not completely clear, it appears that by about 1500 BC there were small villages of wattle-and-daub huts scattered along the shores of the lakes of the Valley of Mexico, with inhabitants subsisting largely on corn–bean–squash cultivation, supplemented by the meat of game animals and by various aquatic resources.

Earliest evidences for the next cultural advances are apparent by about 800 BC in changes in architecture and settlement pattern in several areas of Middle America and Peru. At this time, fairly extensive public works are represented by temple structures and large sculptured monuments, which occupy a central position in towns and villages. Phases as widely separated as the Olmec of Veracruz and the Cupisnique of coastal Peru appear to be linked not only in time and patterns of basic subsistence but in specific ritual practices involving a jaguar or feline deity. Throughout Middle America and in the Andean area, this appears to have been a time of consolidation and establishment of the basic traditions that dominated the development of high cultures in the New World up to European contact.

Hopewell culture

The spread of cultivation into North America seems to have proceeded along two separate courses, one from northern Mexico into the southwest and the other from an unknown Middle American source into the Mississippi Valley. One of the earliest known phases in eastern North America in which corn cultivation appears to have had a role in subsistence is the Adena, which occupied the middle Ohio River Valley by about 800 BC. The stimulus of the Adena farmers was apparently instrumental in bringing about the spectacular Hopewell culture in the Illinois and Ohio valleys. The success of the Hopewell peoples (400 BC to AD 400) seems to have been due largely to their combining elements of the preceding Archaic cultures with elements of the Adena culture and perhaps with some features of a local cultivating tradition. It is evident that the Hopewell culture included a well-organized village-based society in which surplus resources were used in the construction of elaborate earthworks and were concentrated as wealth in a restricted group of individuals. The most outstanding feature of Hopewell culture is a burial complex that called for the deposition of concentrations of wealth in tombs of one or several deceased individuals. The interment procedure was elaborate and involved the construction of a large log tomb, later burned and covered by an earth mound. Artifacts found within these burial mounds indicate that the Hopewell were able to obtain goods from widespread localities in North America. Obsidian and grizzly-bear teeth were apparently derived from the Rocky Mountain region, copper from the northern Great Lakes, and conch shells and other exotic objects from the southeast and along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. The ceramics of the Hopewell appear to be based in two major traditions, one derived from northern Asia, which reached eastern North America by about 1000 BC, and the other from Middle America, where the decorative technique of rocker-stamping, characteristic of finer Hopewell pottery, existed several hundred years prior to the earliest appearance of the Hopewell culture. In less favourable areas of eastern North America, a “generalized Woodland” culture paralleled the Hopewell in time, probably based more on collecting than on cultivation.

Mississippi Mississippian culture

The period of the Hopewell culture was followed by relative decline in social cohesion in the northern Mississippi and Ohio valleys, evidenced by the absence of unifying features comparable to the Hopewell in the succeeding generalized Woodland culture. At about AD 800 a new tradition, with much stronger and more specific Middle American elements, moved up the Mississippi Valley. This Mississippi Mississippian culture was based on more intensive cultivating techniques than the Hopewell and resulted in impressive concentrations of population in large towns through the southern and central Mississippi Valley and in several areas of the southeastern United States. A central ceremonial plaza provided the nucleus of a Mississippi town, and each settlement had one or more pyramidal or oval earth mounds, surmounted by a temple or chief’s residence, grouped around the plaza. This settlement pattern is typical of most of Middle America after about 850 BC but is not found in North America until the Mississippi Mississippian culture appears. The scale of public works in the culture can be estimated from remains of the largest of the Mississippi Mississippian earthworks, Monk’s Mound near Cahokia, Illinois, which measures 1,000 feet in length, more than 700 feet in width, and is still 100 feet in height. The first European explorers in the southern Mississippi Valley in the early 16th century found the Mississippi Mississippian culture still flourishing as warring alliances of towns, each ruled through a theocratic system based on kin ties.

Pueblos

In the southwest, the earliest villages of farmers appeared by about 200 BC, and this initial development in southern New Mexico and Arizona was succeeded by a gradual spread of this way of life as far north as southwestern Colorado, east to the Pecos River, and west into the lower valley of the Colorado River. The maximum expansion of the Puebloan culture of the eastern and northern portions of the southwest appears to have taken place by AD 1150 or 1200 and was followed by the gradual abandonment of much of the area by farming peoples. This decline seems to have been due to a combination of factors, including drought, deforestation, and lack of social cohesion within the villages. At the time of historic contact the Puebloan peoples were restricted to the Rio Grande Valley and adjacent localities and to scattered settlements in west central New Mexico and on the Hopi mesas of Arizona. The early explorers encountered other less well-organized farming groups, descended from the Hohokam and Patayan traditions of the southwest, in scattered localities along the Gila, Salt, and Colorado rivers.

South America

In South America, little is known of cultural development outside the Andean area, where, as in Middle America, urban civilization was well under way by the first few centuries AD. From a sequence near the mouth of the Orinoco, it appears that manioc cultivation, which formed the subsistence base for stable villages in the tropical forest, had been developed by about 1000 BC. Peripheral to the Andean area, numerous cultures are known, particularly in Colombia and northern Argentina and Chile, that show marked influence from Andean urban centres and yet preserve distinct local traditions throughout the late prehistoric period.

The general picture

An overall view of the prehistory of the New World prior to the development of urban civilization reveals several general trends. The outline above follows the forefront of cultural development as it took place in several well-known areas. In localities less favourable to primary or intensive cultivation, the level of cultural development tended to stabilize at the point at which maximum food production was possible with the techniques at hand. Thus, in the Arctic and in the boreal forests of the north, as well as through most of southern South America and various other regions unfavourable for cultivation, cultural activity remained at an Archaic food-collecting level through the entire prehistoric period. In the tropical forests of South America and the woodlands of the northeastern United States, farming villages were the apex of cultural development under prehistoric conditions. In relatively favourable areas, such as the Mississippi Valley, the oasis regions of the southwestern United States, and several other regions peripheral to the South and Middle American high-culture centres, temple-centred towns were the climactic development. A general appraisal of cultural complexity reveals a trend from a single or few early cultural phases of uniform composition covering the entire New World, to the extremely diversified cultures of the last two millennia of the prehistoric period. Within the sequence of cultural development, it appears that the greatest diversity is present at the village-farming level, with hundreds of distinct phases indicating essentially locally oriented social groups that gradually united into larger units as communication and political pressures from more successful centres submerged the cultures of the weaker local phases.

When compared with the Old World sequence, a similar succession of cultural levels can be distinguished in the New World, but there are differences in such basic qualities as the lack of economically important domestic animals in the New World and the much greater diversity of habitats and forms in which the various cultivated plants originated. These factors seem basic in explaining the wide discrepancy in rapidity of cultural development between the Old and the New World once the idea of cultivation was present. It was not until several cultivated crops (corn, beans, and squash for most of the New World) were fully developed and assembled that higher cultural levels were possible.